Full disclosure: Cassandra’s been a huge fan of the series since the beginning, so much so that I Tuckerized her in Fix. (In many ways, she has the most tragic death.) But if you’re a fan of the ‘Mancer series, this is a superfan saying that I managed to cobble together a good ending for what was never intended to be a trilogy, but sorta turned out that way.

And also, after having spent literally a week trying to figure out how to start my next novel, I finally cracked the opening 583 words in the first half hour of my birthday. This is after experimenting with twenty-five different attempts, four serious, all of which sucked on some level or another. But now I feel nothing but a strange giddiness, because the other attempts weren’t bad, they just weren’t as good as the novel I wanted to write.